Grit rollers have been employed to provide a gripping surface on printer drive rollers to advance the paper through the paper path and prevent slippage of the paper. These rollers have a rough surface defined by grit adhered to a surface, can have a relatively small diameter, and work well for the intended purpose. Grit rollers are relatively expensive, and would unduly add to the cost of low cost, high volume printers.
Rubber surfaced rollers have also been used as drive rollers for printers, and are relatively inexpensive, but are not as accurate as grit rollers, and also have the disadvantage of relatively large diameter error, requiring a larger roller diameter to compensate for the lack of tolerances.
Another problem of drive rollers is that of attachment of the bearings for the drive rollers. Bearings are expensive, and attachment to the drive rollers can lead to damage.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide a drive roller for a printer which is accurate and with relatively diameter error, and is relatively inexpensive to build.
It would further be advantageous to provide an inexpensive technique for attaching the bearings to the drive roller in such a way as to avoid the need for high tolerances.